Freed Pair Consider Lawsuit

Media Requests, Lawyers Swamp Husband, Wife

April 11, 2005|By Alva James-Johnson Staff Writer

All that Arthur and Mary Ross wanted Sunday was some peace and quiet to recuperate from a week behind bars after they unwittingly purchased plane tickets to bring their grandchildren to South Florida illegally.

But the Fort Lauderdale grandparents, who faced extradition to California before child abduction charges against them were dropped Friday, were too busy trying to assess their legal rights, fend off media interview requests and sort through mail from about 20 attorneys who want to represent them.

The couple said they talked to one attorney, Ellis Rubin, over the telephone since their release from jail on Friday. But they were too fatigued Sunday to make any legal decisions. It didn't matter that Rubin already had held a news conference Saturday saying he was considering filing a lawsuit on behalf of the couple against authorities responsible for their arrest.

"Definitely. I'm going to file one, but I'm just coming out of jail and I haven't had time to think about it," said Mary Ross, who suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. "They're not allowing me to rest, and I'm tired."

Arthur Ross, 67, and Mary Ross, 62, were arrested April 1, one day after their daughter, Brenda, showed up at their home with her two children, ages 14 and 17. Brenda Ross, who was also arrested, no longer has custody of the two children and had no legal right to take them out of California, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

After fainting when police came to arrest her, Mary Ross said she spent the first two days chained to a bed at Broward General Medical Center. She said she didn't know California law authorities had asked for her extradition on Friday until she read about it in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Thursday morning.

The couple's incarceration prevented them from celebrating their 28th wedding anniversary and they had to communicate through collect phone calls to Mary Ross' sister.

"If he calls you, please say `happy anniversary' and I love him," Mary Ross recalls saying. "This is the first year that we've been separated."

During her incarceration, the disabled 25-year-old grandson whom Mary Ross has taken care of since birth was left alone at home and had to be tended to by one of her nephews.

The couple's plight caught the attention of State Rep. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, who pushed for their release and called on Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene. That became unnecessary when the Los Angeles District Attorney dropped the charges against the couple late Thursday.

Mary Ross, an evangelist at the New Covenant Deliverance Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale, said she and her husband went to church Sunday morning and found comfort.

"It was all about how God delivered us," she said. "The bishop preached about Peter and how God released him from jail."

But by Sunday afternoon the couple was preparing to entertain Smith for a discussion about their next course of action.

"That's what we're sitting up for. Otherwise I'd be head-over-heels in my bed," Mary Ross said Sunday evening. "I never dealt with anything of this nature, and don't know how to go about [doing] anything ... I just want to get my name cleared of everything, even if it's in a computer."

On April 1, Mary Ross said her grandchildren had just made her an ice cream cone when police arrived at the house at about 10 p.m., pushed over a dining room table and shoved her out of the way to look for her husband in the back room.

"It was raining police," Mary Ross said. When she fainted, she was rushed to Broward General with a blood pressure of 200 over 110, she said. "They wanted to shackle me, but the doctors said don't because my ankles swell so much," she said. "So they put a chain on my arm and [locked] me to the bed."

She remained in the hospital until Monday morning, when she was transferred to the Broward County jail.

She said she was still so weak that she fell down the stairs on her way to breakfast.

On Tuesday, she was taken to a women's detention center in Pompano Beach, where she shared a room with 28 other women, she said.

"I had no privacy going to the bathroom, the guards are even outside when you go to the stool," she said. "You don't have any rights."

"I asked the Lord, `If you have a reason for me being here, just let me know,'" she said.

But she made the best of the situation, and soon she was playing cards with some of the inmates.

When she was called from the cell about 4 a.m. Friday, she thought she was on her way to California. But she was pleasantly surprised.

"I just jumped up and started shouting and rejoicing," she said. "Someone said don't cry, and I said, `Honey, these are tears of joy.'"

Alva James-Johnson can be reached at ajjohnson@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4523.